I'm sure that there are several ways of making tire treads on a 3d tire. But other than extruding faces of the grid/mesh to make tire treads, I wanted to know of some other ways that people are using. For example, if i wanted to make a squiggly line or text as the tire tread. is there a way of writing the text, or drawing a line, then sticking it onto the part of the tire that the tread should be on, then extruding that?

I'm guessing if i get the text onto the tire somehow, then extrude the text, i'd have to use a boolean operation at some point.

Anyhow, if anybody would like to share their tire tread making ideas, please do!

Try the trace sop with a image, Then extrude.

G

i've been trying to find that elusive trace sop. i'm using houdini apprentice 64bit and i still can't find it! Well i guess that's why i'm an apprentice.

lets say i find the trace sop. i'll trace an image, extrude it…

and then do i bend that extrusion around the tire by eyeballing it, or is there a magic way of using another sop? thanks in advance!

Here's a thread [forums.odforce.net] over at odforce that should be useful.

Cheers!
steven

That is a better solution!

G

ok i finally found the trace sop. Thanks for the thread about the Bend SOP. I've downloaded it and installed it (along with a few more sops from that site).

What a coincidence, in that other thread, somebody was trying to bend an object around to make a tire for the Kenada motorcycle from Akira. I was trying to do almost the exact same thing!!!!!